CREATING A NEW BRAND FDR ANEW BUSINESS Contemporary Art Contemporary art, often defined as nontraditional art from the 19705, can sell for incredible...

CREATING A NEW BRAND FDR ANEW BUSINESS
Contemporary Art Contemporary art, often defined as nontraditional art from the 19705, can sell for incredible sums of money.
Damien created a square array of colored dots that have been sold for up to $1,500,000. Hundreds of these have
been made and sold. While still an unknown artist, Hirst sold a work that consisted ofﬂies being hatched and
attracted to a decaying cow’s head only to be zapped by a bug zapper to Charles Saatchi, the advertising executive
and prominent collector. It was called &quot;A Thousand Years” and was said to depict life and death. Saatchi, who owns
over 3,000 contemporary artworks, is generous about loaning them to museums ifthey agree to display other
pieces {so that they can be said to have been displayed in the museum). There are dozens of artists who command
high prices: On Kawara paints a date such as Nov 3, 1989 on a canvas. There are approximately 2,000 in existence;
one sold for $500,000 in 2006 at a Christie‘s auction. Christie’s and Sotheby’s are the two most prestigious auction
houses. it has been estimated that a painting will get 20 percent more if sold at one of these two auction houses,
in part, because of their brands. Christopher Wool sold a painting of ﬁfteen stenciled letters that spelled
Rundogrundogrun for $1.24 million in 2005. In 2008 a seven-foot Mark Rothko painting that had been owned by
David Rockefeller {who bought it in 1960 for $8,500) sold at Sothebi/s for $72.8 million, nearly three times more
than the previous high for a Rothko. Jeff Koons, famous for making vacuum cleaners an art object, sold life-size a
sculpture of Michael Jackson and his pet monkey for $5.6 million despite the fact that there were two other copies
ofthe piece. The fact that the other copies were owned by the San Francisco MDMA and a prominent collector
actually enhanced the value ofthe third piece. Tracey Emin, an artist with a reputation for taking on taboo topics
with an autobiographical ﬂair, established a style and the premium prices that go with it by creating a bad girl
image. For example, she posed nude for commercials, created atent embroidered with names of her past lovers,
and appeared on British television so drunk that she had no memory of it. Why these prices? One hypothesis is
that this art is objectively exceptional and its high quality merits a premium price. That is dem onstratively false.
Consider the following. There was a painting ofJoseph Stalin, worthless until Damien Hirst painted a red nose on
the subject and signed his name—it then sold for $250,000. A Jackson Pollack look-alike painting was bought at a
ﬂea market. A series of experts could not ascertain if it was an authentic Pollack or not. The same painting was
either worth a few thousand or tens of millions depending on whether it was deemed authentic. An auction
professional once said, &quot;Never underestimate how insecure buyers are about contemporary art, and how much
they always need reassurance.” What makes these prices even more puzzling is the fact that several of the top
artists do not do their own work. Andy Warhol famously did little of his own artwork. Hirst has a staff of 20 or so
who do all of his work including the colored spots. So the question is why do these artists attract such prices? And more basically, how does a painter create a brand
that will command such fantastic sums? These questions are more general than they might seem. There are many
businesses for which it is not possible to objectively know the value of the product or service. Most customers lack
the information and often the expertise to evaluate service ﬁrms. There are also products, such as motor oil, for
which it is not possible tojudge the quality. Even products such as cars or computers are difficult to evaluate
because they are complex and speciﬁcations do not tell the whole story. Furthermore, even if a person took the
time to pour through Consumer Reports, it is not clear that its recommendations will reﬂect the right decision
criteria for that customer. David A. Aaker; Christine Moorman. Strategic Market Management, 11th Edition (Page 325). . Kindle Edition.

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A brand is the feature in products or service rendered from a particular business that distinguishes it from other related...
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